Global solutions to 2-D inhomogeneous Navier–Stokes system with general velocity

In this paper, we are concerned with the global wellposedness of 2-D density-dependent incompressible Navier–Stokes equations (1.1) with variable viscosity, in a critical functional framework which is invariant by the scaling of the equations and under a nonlinear smallness condition on fluctuation of the initial density which has to be doubly exponential small compared with the size of the initial velocity. In the second part of the paper, we apply our methods combined with the techniques in Danchin and Mucha (2012) [10] to prove the global existence of solutions to (1.1) with constant viscosity and with piecewise constant initial density which has small jump at the interface and is away from vacuum. In particular, this latter result removes the smallness condition for the initial velocity in a corresponding theorem of Danchin and Mucha (2012) [10].     

Stability of reflection and refraction of shocks on interface

In this paper we study the stability of the nonlinear wave structure caused by the attack of an incident shock on an interface of two different kinds of media. The attack will produce a reflected wave and a refracted wave, and also let the interface deflected. In this paper we will mainly study the case, when the reflected wave is a shock, and the flow between the reflected wave and the refracted shock is relatively subsonic. Our result indicates that the wave structure and the flow field for the reflection-refraction problem in this case is conditionally stable.To describe the motion of the fluid we use the inviscid Euler system as the mathematical model. The reflection-refraction problem can be reduced to a free boundary value problem, where the unknown reflected shock and refracted shock are free boundaries, and the deflected interface is also to be determined. In the proof of the existence and the stability of the corresponding wave structure we apply the Lagrange transformation to fix the interface and the decoupling technique to decouple the elliptic-hyperbolic composite system in its principal part. Meanwhile, some efficient weighted Sobolev estimates are established to derive the existence for corresponding nonlinear problems.     

On Stokes flow with variable and degenerate surface tension coefficient

Short-time existence, uniqueness, and regularity results are shown for the moving boundary problem of a free drop of liquid governed by the Stokes equations and driven by surface tension. The value of the surface tension coefficient is variable, not necessarily strictly positive, and transported with the flow on the moving surface.By a perturbation of identity approach, the problem is transformed into a nonlinear, nonlocal first order degenerate parabolic evolution equation on a fixed reference manifold. Its solvability is proved by deriving a priori estimates and using Galerkin approximations.     

Vanishing viscosity limit of short wave–long wave interactions in planar magnetohydrodynamics

We study several mathematical aspects of a system of equations modelling the interaction between short waves, described by a nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and long waves, described by the equations of magnetohydrodynamics for a compressible, heat conductive fluid. The system in question models an aurora-type phenomenon, where a short wave propagates along the streamlines of a magnetohydrodynamic medium. We focus on the one dimensional (planar) version of the model and address the problem of well posedness as well as convergence of the sequence of solutions as the bulk viscosity tends to zero together with some other interaction parameters, to a solution of the limit decoupled system involving the compressible Euler equations and a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The vanishing viscosity limit serves to justify the SW–LW interactions in the limit equations as, in this setting, the SW–LW interactions cannot be defined in a straightforward way, due to the possible occurrence of vacuum.     

2D backward stochastic Navier-Stokes equations with nonlinear forcing

The paper is concerned with the existence and uniqueness of a strong solution to a two-dimensional backward stochastic Navier-Stokes equation with nonlinear forcing, driven by a Brownian motion. We use the spectral approximation and the truncation and variational techniques. The methodology features an interactive analysis on the basis of the regularity of the deterministic Navier-Stokes dynamics and the stochastic properties of the Itô-type diffusion processes.     

Global regularity for the 2D Boussinesq equations with partial viscosity terms

In this paper, we prove the global in time regularity for the 2D Boussinesq system with either the zero diffusivity or the zero viscosity. We also prove that as diffusivity (viscosity) tends to zero, the solutions of the fully viscous equations converge strongly to those of zero diffusion (viscosity) equations. Our result for the zero diffusion system, in particular, solves the Problem no. 3 posed by Moffatt in [R.L. Ricca, (Ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2001, pp. 3-10].     

Extreme wave phenomena in down-stream running modulated waves

Modulational, Benjamin-Feir, instability is studied for the down-stream evolution of surface gravity waves. An explicit solution, the soliton on finite background, of the NLS equation in physical space is used to study various phenomena in detail. It is shown that for sufficiently long modulation lengths, at a unique position where the largest waves appear, phase singularities are present in the time signal. These singularities are related to wave dislocations and lead to a discrimination between successive ‘extreme’ waves and much smaller intermittent waves. Energy flow in opposite directions through successive dislocations at which waves merge and split, causes the large amplitude difference. The envelope of the time signal at that point is shown to have a simple phase plane representation, and will be described by a symmetry breaking unfolding of the steady state solutions of NLS. The results are used together with the maximal temporal amplitude MTA, to design a strategy for the generation of extreme (freak, rogue) waves in hydrodynamic laboratories.     

Transport and instability for perfect fluids

Incompressible perfect fluids are described by the Euler equations. We provide a new simple proof for well-posedness for velocities in and linear and nonlinear instability results using transport techniques. The results have an important consequence: the topology of is too fine for interesting questions about large time behavior. Received: 14 September 2001 / Published online: 4 April 2002     

Estimates on enstrophy, palinstrophy, and invariant measures for 2-D turbulence

We construct semi-integral curves which bound the projection of the global attractor of the 2-D Navier-Stokes equations in the plane spanned by enstrophy and palinstrophy. Of particular interest are certain regions of the plane where palinstrophy dominates enstrophy. Previous work shows that if solutions on the global attractor spend a significant amount of time in such a region, then there is a cascade of enstrophy to smaller length scales, one of the main features of 2-D turbulence theory. The semi-integral curves divide the plane into regions having limited ranges for the direction of the flow. This allows us to estimate the average time it would take for an intermittent solution to burst into a region of large palinstrophy. We also derive a sharp, universal upper bound on the average palinstrophy and show that it is achieved only for forces that admit statistical steady states where the nonlinear term is zero.     

A justification for the thin film approximation of Stokes flow with surface tension

In the free boundary problem of Stokes flow driven by surface tension, we pass to the limit of small layer thickness. It is rigorously shown that in this limit the evolution is given by the well-known thin film equation. The main techniques are appropriate scaling and uniform energy estimates in Sobolev spaces of sufficiently high order, based on parabolicity.     

Global weak solutions and asymptotic behavior to 1D compressible Navier-Stokes equations with density-dependent viscosity and vacuum

This paper is concerned with existence of global weak solutions to a class of compressible Navier-Stokes equations with density-dependent viscosity and vacuum. When the viscosity coefficient μ is proportional to ρθ with , a global existence result is obtained which improves the previous results in Fang and Zhang (2004) [4], Vong et al. (2003) [27], Yang and Zhu (2002) [30]. Here ρ is the density. Moreover, we prove that the domain, where fluid is located on, expands outwards into vacuum at an algebraic rate as the time grows up due to the dispersion effect of total pressure. It is worth pointing out that our result covers the interesting case of the Saint-Venant model for shallow water (i.e., θ=1, γ=2).     

Diffusion vanishing limit of the nonlinear pipe Magnetohydrodynamic flow with fixed viscosity

We establish magnetic diffusion vanishing limit of the nonlinear pipe Magnetohydrodynamic flow by the mathematical validity of the Prandtl boundary layer theory with fixed viscosity. The convergence is verified under various Sobolev norms, including the L~∞(L~2)and L~∞(H~1) norm.     

Asymptotic stability of nonlinear wave for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the half space

In the present paper, we investigate the large-time behavior of the solution to an initial-boundary value problem for the isentropic compressible Navier-Stokes equations in the Eulerian coordinate in the half space. This is one of the series of papers by the authors on the stability of nonlinear waves for the outflow problem of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Some suitable assumptions are made to guarantee that the time-asymptotic state is a nonlinear wave which is the superposition of a stationary solution and a rarefaction wave. Employing the L²-energy method and making use of the techniques from the paper [S. Kawashima, Y. Nikkuni, Stability of rarefaction waves for the discrete Boltzmann equations, Adv. Math. Sci. Appl. 12 (1) (2002) 327-353], we prove that this nonlinear wave is nonlinearly stable under a small perturbation. The complexity of nonlinear wave leads to many complicated terms in the course of establishing the a priori estimates, however those terms are of two basic types, and the terms of each type are “good” and can be evaluated suitably by using the decay (in both time and space variables) estimates of each component of nonlinear wave.     

Bernoulli jets and the zero mean curvature equation

We consider an elliptic PDE problem related with fluid mechanics. We show that level sets of rescaled solutions satisfy the zero mean curvature equation in a suitable weak viscosity sense. In particular, such level sets cannot be touched from below (above) by a convex (concave) paraboloid in a suitably small neighborhood.     

Small amplitude steady internal waves in stratified fluids

We study the weakly non linear solutions of theDubreil-Jacotin—Long elliptic equation in a strip, which describes two dimensional gravity internal waves propagating steadily in a stratified fluid. In the neighborhood of the first critical value of the Froude number, the center manifold theorem ensures that small solutions are parametrized by two coordinates which verify a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. We compute numerically the coefficients of the normal form of this reduced system for a three parameters family of stratifications and show that the quadratic coefficient (the most important) may become small. In that case, nonusual waves such as fronts can propagate. The last part of our work studies the case when a smooth stratification converges towards a piecewise constant profile having one discontinuity. We observe formally that the small waves which propagate at the interface of two homogeneous fluids are limits at leading order of waves travelling in the region where the smooth density varies rapidly.     

Global well-posedness for the 2D Boussinesq system with anisotropic viscosity and without heat diffusion

We establish global existence and uniqueness theorems for the two-dimensional non-diffusive Boussinesq system with anisotropic viscosity acting only in the horizontal direction, which arises in ocean dynamics models. Global well-posedness for this system was proven by Danchin and Paicu; however, an additional smoothness assumption on the initial density was needed to prove uniqueness. They stated that it is not clear whether uniqueness holds without this additional assumption. The present work resolves this question and we establish uniqueness without this additional assumption. Furthermore, the proof provided here is more elementary; we use only tools available in the standard theory of Sobolev spaces, and without resorting to para-product calculus. We use a new approach by defining an auxiliary “stream-function” associated with the density, analogous to the stream-function associated with the vorticity in 2D incompressible Euler equations, then we adapt some of the ideas of Yudovich for proving uniqueness for 2D Euler equations.     

Finite time singularities in a 1D model of the quasi-geostrophic equation

In this paper we study 1D equations with nonlocal flux. These models have resemblance of the 2D quasi-geostrophic equation. We show the existence of singularities in finite time and construct explicit solutions to the equations where the singularities formed are shocks. For the critical viscosity case we show formation of singularities and global existence of solutions for small initial data.